On April 22, FSU’s National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC) team, Arrowhead competed and won at the district level. To win, they created an innovative and strategic advertising/marketing/media campaign for the NSAC sponsor and corporate client, Tai Pei- a frozen Asian foods company. The American Advertising Federation hosted the NSAC.

Arrowhead is a 19-person team led by Advertising Professor Barry Solomon. Though the team focuses in advertising, students of all majors are welcomed and encouraged to apply and interview with Professor Solomon to be selected to be on the team.

“It’s awesome to work with others who are just as passionate as you,” Arrowhead Team Captain Nadia Mousa said. “The work is better, it’s more fun, and it’s more rewarding in the end.”

They have been working on the campaign since August in a class dedicated for Arrowhead, in addition to spending countless hours working on the campaign outside of the classroom. In the fall they focused solely on research among five teams: nontraditional, survey, interviews, focus groups, and secondary research. There is also a strategy team that pieces together all of the research to create the creative brief and big idea reveal. In the spring there are five teams: media, creative, social/digital, research, and promotions. Their research helped them come up with appropriate and innovative ideas to rebrand Tai Pei. There is a four-member presentation team that spends two hours, five times a week practicing their pitch. The campaign is further explained in their plans book.

“Balancing arrowhead and other classes isn’t easy,” Mousa said. “But it’s amazing because everyone on the team participates in other extracurriculars, whether it’s a job or Greek Life, and we still manage to make time to work on the campaign together. If you work hard and you’re passionate about putting together an awesome campaign, you’ll make it work. Working with a team full of talented people helps, too.”

Arrowhead competed in the fourth district against seven other collegiate teams. The presenters gave a 20-minute pitch and creative brief to the judges. The judges also studied the plans book from each school in order to choose a winner.

“Once the plans book and the presentation really come together, it’s amazing to see how much really goes into creating an integrated campaign,” Mousa said. “Being on Arrowhead really gives you a good idea of what it is like to work in an advertising agency in the real world. It was also a really great experience to be on the presentation team because we were able to get real feedback from people who work in the industry.”

Arrowhead has competed for about 25 years, but it has been seven years since Arrowhead has won first place at districts.

“It was so surreal and it was such an amazing feeling,” Mousa said. “We’ve worked so hard as a team and it was really satisfying to hear awesome feedback from the judges we presented to. It was also just rewarding to bring back first place my senior year.”

The Arrowhead Team is currently preparing for semifinals, which is done through a videoconference with four new judges from the client, Tai Pei, on May 4. The head strategist, Jaron Hall and another member of the strategy team, Frances Hanson will give a five-minute pitch explaining how their campaign addresses the objectives given to them by Tai Pei. The pitch is then followed by a 15-minute Q&A session with the judges. If they are selected for the final round, the team will then compete at the National Competition in New Orleans June 7-8.

“Every single member of the team made a contribution and without each student's efforts this achievement would not have been possible,” Arrowhead Supervisor and Professor Barry Solomon said. “These are very dedicated and passionate students. To see their hard work recognized by professionals was very rewarding. But the most satisfying moment for me was the joy on everyone's faces when they were announced as the winning team.”